shrimp

Here’s what people are saying about shrimp “In shrimp, jason vasser-elong casts past, present, and future into the waters of fitful reckoning. His words emerge from the waves and froth, spelling out the truths behind ancestry and individuality.”

— Ron Austin, professor, author and 2016 Regional Arts Commission Fellow “jason vasser-elong’s verse pulls at the very sinews of our heart muscles. With a surgeon’s eye, he moves from massaging the muscle to life — ‘she looks back over her tomb/ then back into the trees/ trembling to the shore’ — to incisive cutting — ‘beneath my skin are feathers,/ what comes out as words are really songs.’ The dexterity with which he moves between subjectivities serves to create an adventurous collection; alternately gripping with suspenseful narrative, and, and at times, drenched in sorrowful, knowing lyricism. shrimp is an astounding debut collection.”

— Treasure Shields-Redmond, poet, speaker, diversity and inclusion coach, and social justice educator “shrimp is a collection of powerful and thought-provoking poems, masterfully written, while on a quest for true identity.

During his journey to discover self, jason vasser-elong draws us in with metaphors that are relatable and relevant to the issues of equality and advancement today. This collection of work is inspiring and empowering on many levels.”

— Debora Grandison writer, poet and inspirational speaker Poetry Out Loud Regional Coordinator-STL

“Through the inviting poems in shrimp, jason vasser-elong includes us on his lyric quest to determine who he is and in what ways he as an individual connects with his family, his multi-racial lineage and present day society. With quiet determination, poetic poise and concision, in shrimp he paints for us a powerful portrait of a man unafraid to examine himself and his surroundings, whether he’s in the kitchen cooking dinner or walking down Delmar Boulevard in St. Louis.”

— Sally Van Doren, poet, artist and author of the poetry collection, Promise: Poems (2017).

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shrii mp JASON VASSER-ELONG Introduction by Michael Castro

NEW YORK www.2leafpress.org

P.O. Box 4378 Grand Central Station New York, New York 10163-4378 editor@2leafpress.org www.2leafpress.org 2LEAF PRESS is an imprint of the Intercultural Alliance of Artists & Scholars, Inc. (IAAS), a NY-based nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that promotes multicultural literature and literacy. www.theiaas.org Copyright Š 2018 jason vasser-elong Cover art and design: DÊ-Jon Graves Poetry editor: Sean Dillon Book design and layout: Gabrielle David Library of Congress Control Number: 2017963106 ISBN-13:978-1-940939-67-4 (Paperback) ISBN-13: 978-1-940939-81-0 (eBook) 10

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Published in the United States of America First Edition | First Printing 2LEAF PRESS print books are available for sale on most online retailers in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia. For more information, contact sales@ 2leafpress.org.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopied, recorded or otherwise without permission from the Intercultural Alliance of Artists & Scholars, Inc. (IAAS).

For Mary Jones and Chatty Vasser

Contents

INTRODUCTION by Michael Castro........................ 1 Portrait ............................................................. 7 Reason ............................................................. 9 In my prayers .................................................10 Heirloom .........................................................11 The truest lie ...................................................12 Immigrant ......................................................13 African ............................................................14 Wind/Quiet/Black ............................................15 Vasser .............................................................16 Poem at 38 .....................................................17 In homage .....................................................19 Sankofa .........................................................20 Character .......................................................21 Sea lion .........................................................22 A day in the life ...............................................23 September 15, 2017 ........................................25 Gemini woman ...............................................26

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Bachelor of arts ..............................................27 Ethnographic Study: short people in a circle .....................................28 Introducing Mason Bassett ................................. 31 Dog people ....................................................32 Pocket poem #1 ..............................................33 Song for spring ..............................................34 Operation maroon ..........................................36 Gutter rainbow ...............................................38 Subtraction .....................................................39 Arthropod ......................................................40 The accident ...................................................41 Foster .............................................................42 Probability ......................................................43 AfriKen doll .....................................................44 Bell peppers ...................................................46 Rooted ...........................................................47 Finches ..........................................................48 Envy ...............................................................50 Fields of Marigold ...........................................52 Two ducks ......................................................54 Mixed .............................................................55 Watching monsters with Dad ............................56 Creature ........................................................57 Poem for Holland ............................................58 Seven ..............................................................61

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Negro: ...........................................................62 A Jewel ..........................................................63 Laundry day in the city .....................................64 i too have known rivers ....................................65 On becoming men...........................................66 Fear of heights ...............................................67 The father .......................................................68 Junebug in the alley ........................................69 Men talking ....................................................70 Eraser ............................................................71 44 West .........................................................72 Remnant ........................................................73 Blue ...............................................................74 Look ...............................................................75 American: ......................................................76 Middle ground ..............................................77 i will go to Meshuggah’s ...................................78 Delmar Loop pantoum .....................................79 Nichols island .................................................81 Acculturation ..................................................82 Loafers ...........................................................83 Shake ............................................................84 Ujamma .........................................................85 Nkyinkyini {Oon–chim-chim} ...........................86 At dinner ........................................................87

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Black face ......................................................88 Elong {eh–long} .............................................89 Falling in love .................................................90 Rules for rain ..................................................91 Daydream ......................................................94 A twinkle in the eye .........................................96 The other zoo ..................................................97 The way that i am ...........................................98 Gravitational ..................................................99 Devil at the enchanted jungle .........................100 A-Z ...............................................................101 Unicorn / an ars poetica ................................103 Lunar ............................................................104 Monster .......................................................105 Lady bug ......................................................106 Ode to our hands .........................................107 Presence ......................................................109 Move / Aspirant / Stand still ..............................110 King of the jungle .........................................111 Drummer boy ................................................113 Turtle power ..................................................114 Visit .............................................................115 Madeira island .............................................116 Keepsake ....................................................117 Pocket poem #2 ............................................118

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Mangroves ...................................................119 My Atlantic ...................................................120 Wise bird Villanelle .......................................121 Caged .........................................................122 Animal ..........................................................123 Black in February ..........................................124 Right here / Right now ...................................125 Dog abroad .................................................126 The black friend at the party ..........................127 Frankenstein’s shadow ..................................128 City...............................................................129 Fair trade

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Charity ........................................................132 Labyrinth .......................................................134 On Proverbs 6:6 ............................................135 Legend..........................................................136 Sea Monkey .................................................137 Sidewalk garden ............................................138 Libation for an unmarked grave ......................139 Fossil ...........................................................140 From my window ..........................................141 Life’s a peach ...............................................143 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ......................................145 ABOUT THE POET ............................................... 149 OTHER BOOKS BY 2LEAF PRESS ......................... 153 shrimp shr mp

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Introduction JASON VASSER-ELONG announces early on in shrimp, his debut collection of poetry, in “Pocket poem #1”: I’m sure the world is tired of angry Black man poems about the struggle as much as those angry Black men are tired of struggling (p. 33) These are not the poems of an “angry Black man;” nevertheless, they are poems from a Black man’s perspective.

When vasser-elong writes about “the struggle,” rather than anger and directness his approach tends to be understated, subtle and oblique.

“Watching Monsters with Dad” p. 56, for instance, describes watching horror movies with his father, specifically the scene in Frankenstein in which the villagers chase the monster with fire and pitchforks. The poem concludes, “The black and white of the screen / set this motif in the distant past, / a relic of how people used to be.” “The “black and white” of the scene subtly cues us to the ironic contemporary reference of the final line. The monsters are the villagers, i.e., white folks, and not their target, the hated and feared “Other.” It is a moment of epiphany shared by father and son.

In a similar understated vein, the poem “Vasser” p. 16, describes meeting white people who recognize his name as Dutch, and offer to connect him with his namesakes to

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see if they are related: “I can only imagine / that we are,” he responds, “but not in the way that stimulates / a cheerful conversation.” In “Reason” p. 9, he elaborates on name: “My name / knew / and where I lived / but not / who I was / or where I was / from.” The name reveals where his ancestors were enslaved, not where they came from. It offers little clue as to vasser-elong’s true identity.

“Vasser” alludes to the Dutch involvement in the slave trade that brought his ancestors to the Americas. And while contemporary racism underlies many of the poems in shrimp, vasser-elong’s relationship to his African ancestry makes up the book’s dominant theme. “My soul looks over the waters / carrying the weight of centuries” he writes in “In My Prayers,” p. 10. The title shrimp refers to the author’s diminutive height, which links him imaginatively to his Camaroonian ancestors. It also casts him doubly as an outsider: as a black man in America, and as a small man, a shrimp in a world populated by whales, And while “Life as a shrimp can be quite lonely,” the struggle to forge an identity true to oneself in the face of misperceptions and stereotypes applied to African Americans dominates these poems. The problem is “to otherwise be you / when they see someone else” vasser-elong writes in “Nkyinkyini {Oon–chim-chim}” p. 69, a tribute to the vaudeville star Bert Williams. vasser-elong sees images of Africanness, all around him in his neighborhood — for example, in the regal bearing of a lady walking to the laundromat carrying her basket on her head “as some women an ocean away, / also tote bags for miles in the sun.” Despite his preoccupation with Africa, he complains in “King of the Jungle” p. 111, “the moment I confess that I am African / there is an explanation

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as to why I am not.” And in fact, vasser-elong confesses in several poems that he’s never been to Africa. His Africa is based on a combination of learning and yearning. The poems seem to yearn for a place, an Africa, free of the false identities America imposes on black men. An America where the best one can hope for is “the elegance of a welllit cage.” The basic problem many of the poems grapple with comes down to, “They say liberty lives in Africa / & yet this is where we are.”

Variations on the identity issue are found in poems throughout the book. “Foster” p. 42, describes the adopted child “Tia who is now Ashley / raised in a family that looks nothing like what she sees / in the mirror, while straightening her hair.” The poem asks, “What happens when she begins to question? . . . When will she meet Alex Haley?” Here vasser-elong suggests the looming identity crisis of a young woman beginning to become self-aware.

Not all the poems are concerned with Africa or identity.

“Junebug in the Alley” p. 69, strikes an optimistic note. It describes young boys in the hood, as “Olympians in training,” as they leap over “mattresses / discarded from high rises.”

They seem to fly, “the open air at their feet.” They are free in those moments. “Imagine what they see in themselves / as they run then leap,” the poem asks. Only good things seem possible as they jump, “in pure confidence, / that they will make it over.”

“Look” p. 75, on the other hand, begins less hopefully, advising us to keep both eyes open to be able to “see the world as it really is in its ugliest.” But the poem concludes on a more positive note asking: “If one isn’t willing to work in the dirt / then how can you really smell the flowers?”

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And what better recommendation is there for a poet? jason vasser-elong is one who is willing to dig deeply into the dirt of his environment or the depths of his own consciousness. He leaves it to us to smell the flowers. n — Michael Castro poet and translator, first Poet Laureate of St. Louis, 2017

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Portrait Paint me — oil on canvas with my face orange on one side my eyes, brown windows, my nose full like the elephant in the room; paint my lips in the smoothest of strokes in fact, try to do it in two indigo blues.

They say you live the blues, my whole life a song sung in the dusky basement on an old stage, one singer accompanied by a pianist and a trumpeter — have her sing it from the soul, make those who listen carry the weight of a lover with his heart on his sleeve;

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paint me — in the middle of a room on a stool, with water all around me filling my bowl with life, make it look like the water is moving — alive.

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Reason my name knew where i lived i

but not who i was or where

i was

from.

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In my prayers i wonder how my incantations fall on their ears.

If they can hear me and not who has fashioned my tongue.

My soul looks over the waters carrying the weight of centuries as sharks follow the trail of our currency; the questioning of one’s worth like pennies in the hand.

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Heirloom & so life begins in the middle, for me, it was a ton of bricks on the sunny streets of Saint Louis, walking Delmar back to the car my grandmother deeded while she, in her eternal giving, feeds flowers in a cemetery — i still have yet to visit.

She is not there, but the gesture is to pay respect, show homage I will get there one day. Life found me surrounded by moths, a candle attracted to the other side of death as it moves and it moves and it moves like time on my father’s watch, the Gucci he took his last breath in, looking at the time, i am reminded that it is limited.

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The truest lie This is the truest lie shadow without a sun light without a moon and if i were ten again it would matter to me, that belt drawer would puuuull the very melody of my heart strings, but i have no tree on my back or blistered finger tips — only principal only cause i lie ever day in my blue jeans oxford collared shirts — i curse every time i open my mouth.

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Immigrant It is the little things.

Someone told me once that I was not African because I hadn’t grown up in a village, like a carrot they dangled that fact right in front of my face — raaaacccccce, the briar rabbit of our time; i replied in perfect diction: well then, how does one explain that I am not from England either?

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African My past and present Ancestral: the mask looking back at me from the mirror

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Wind/Quiet/Black the sea is much larger than i remember coloring as a child, learning about maps, the world.

To be face to surface feels like a dream without ever a thought of land but endless water/water bluer then i have ever seen — and at night the stars are flames in cast iron, they are the beady eyes of my ancestors that watch over the ocean, its water cleaning their bones rattling in the silence when i am alone & my name tastes different on my tongue.

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Vasser is Dutch for vase or German for water, so white people tell me when they shake my hand, after we introduce ourselves.

They make a point to educate me, and immediately express how they seldom meet people like me with that name and that I have a strong grip before they list the other Vassers they know, questioning if we are related — i can only imagine that we are, but not in the way that stimulates a cheerful conversation.

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Poem at 38 Today, i saw a black man, couldn’t have been more than twenty-four seasons into the rain of life — he had on a Planet Sub t-shirt and was with another black man in thick locks wrapped like the nomads that ride camels along the Sahara.

He carried a make shift walking stick, a large branch really, also wrapped at what would be its handle.

For too long it seemed, they would pace then sit, pace then sit.

The young man, recently off from the morning shift, & the nomad were talking when he all of a sudden

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got up from his chair, walked towards the parking lot then proceeded to do twelve push ups from the sidewalk — customers parking their cars, children looking on pointing then at me, also a black man, opening his book to read.

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In homage Along the coastline the sand natural against my naked feet, i overlook the sunset, sit and watch the sea gulls fly over God knows — buried years beneath where i am distracted.

This is the same sun that set on this same water baptized with life, given back to the Lord before man could take it away.

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Sankofa Blue feet browning sand, trees, the smell of air the sound of birds again she looks back over her tomb then back into the trees trembling to the shore.

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Character Some days, i would study my mother watch how she smiled — even when i knew, she was hurting.

Somehow, her eyes would crescent moon, her mood steady like beets on a plate, cantaloupe in the fridge; her kids oblivious that the Apple Circles were not Apple Jacks, nor that we did not have, because we always had what we needed.

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Sea lion Bearded self — adrift sheet of ice carries away from known to unknown

A day in the life for Shane

If God wears a beard, then so shall i — tried to line, trim, until ultimately I cut the thing right off my face, it peeled like tape from a slick surface. i read about him, wondering if its she who really hears my prayers, faithfully believing in the someday, when someone will return — to walk in the light and reach out for my sins to breathe them in like smoke from a pipe, or fumes from the Cadillac’s that pass me — while i walk the sidewalk alone on my way from the dark to more dark.

So much for resembling my heavenly father — or is it my heavenly mother from whom i get my eyes?

And my skin is not white, nor fair, but brown like the paper bag, that covers the bottles, like those that line the sidewalk, drink from, that watch,

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and my hair is nappy when it grows like weeds in the summer, rarely hangs below my neck line or blows in the wind. It mostly sits there like ghettos in big cities motionless and tightly knit waiting for a comb.

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September 15, 2017 Today they let another blue life take another black one back, back to Birmingham in the sixties back to the East Saint Louis of 1917 back to some plantation somewhere, anywhere, Missouri? i suppose there is no room for black on the American flag, no room to acknowledge, to show pride for the backbone there is no solace for the weary, no room to let their hands free that are consumed by the monster left to toil around in the squalor of their forgotten dreams of promise.

They say liberty lives in Africa & yet this is where we are.

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Acknowledgments I GIVE HONOR AND PRAISE to the almighty God for blessing me with this life and for my ancestors, specifically Rose Jones on my mother’s side of the family, born in North Carolina into slavery in 1810, and Chatty Vasser on my father’s side, born into slavery in Egypt, Mississippi, the year of her birth is unknown. May the wind find your souls free from bondage. I want you to know that your sacrifice lives on through me. This book is a manifestation of how the village can take ahold of a child and make a rock from a fist of sand, may my entire family keep my gratitude.

Thank you to my beloved parents, Beverly Cade and Willie Gene Vasser, Jr. (Dad, may your soul forever rest in peace). I thank you two for falling in love long enough to bring me into the world. I want to thank my sisters Jada Bell and Caitlyn Vasser for holding big brother up when he was down. To Shelli Vasser Gilliam (what up cuz?) and her husband (for being so gracious) I thank you for your friendship, guidance, and advice. shrimp is a culmination of the years in my life that I questioned myself and the world in which I lived. To my friends, colleagues and fellow writers at the University of Missouri — Saint Louis’ Master of Fine Arts Program, 20122014, I thank you for your tireless work offering feedback, asking tough questions and for allowing me read your work as well. To my mentor Dr. Sheilah Clark–Ekong, I cannot thank you enough for always being there, for your wisdom, comradery and tough love when I needed it. To Pamela shrimp shr mp

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Ashmore for always making time. To Shane Seely, man, we did it! I thank you for seeing something in me I did not recognize in myself. A BIG thanks to Gabrielle David for this opportunity to share my work, and add my two cents.

Special thanks to Michael Castro for your friendship and to Mrs. Davis, who introduced me to the work of Paul Lawrence Dunbar while I attended Visual Performing Arts and Marquette Middle School. Who knew that “A Negro Love Song” would change the trajectory of my whole life?

And to my beloved, good morning my love, I cannot thank you enough for your love. I know God is real, for here we stand like palm trees.

Finally, to you for reading this very personal part of me, I thank you. I hope that something within these pages touched you and changed you as the tide shifts the sand. n “If you think you’re too small to make a difference, you haven’t spent the night with a mosquito” — African Proverb

NOTES 1. Kunta Kinte is a character in Alex Haley’s iconic book Roots, first published in 1976 by Dell publishing Company. In a scene in the book, Kunta is whipped by a slaver and was forced to change his name from Kunta Kinte to Toby, at his master’s behest.

2. Makossa is a noted Cameroonian popular urban musical style. Like much other late twentieth century music of Sub-Saharan Africa, it uses strong electric bass rhythms and prominent brass. In the 1980s makossa had a wave of mainstream success across Africa and to a lesser extent abroad.

3.

The capital of the West Region of Cameroon, in the Bamboutos

Mountains.

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About the Poet

JASON VASSER-ELONG is a poet and essayist that was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, with maternal ancestral roots in Cameroon, Central Africa. He earned a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from the University of Missouri — St. Louis after studying cultural anthropology and presenting his ethnographic research Rhyme and Reason: Poetics as Societal Dialogue. He has an essay “Treading the Atlantic” in the special edition of the Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies — Netherlandic Migrations: Narratives from North America and his most recent poetry appears in Black Lives Have Always Mattered (2017), edited by Abiodun Oyewole, Crossing the Divide: From the Poets of Saint Louis (Vagabond, 2016), and Unveiling Visions: The Alcheshrimp shr mp

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my of The Black Imagination (2016). In 2017, he served as the curator for “Context II,” an art exhibition at the Foundry Art Center in St. Charles, Missouri, and was featured in the St. Louis Post Dispatch article, “Poetry can be an early form of artistic response to trauma,” by Jane Henderson. He recently appeared in “Never Been a Time” a documentary written and produced by Denise Ward Brown, about the East St. Louis riots of 1917 that sparked the civil rights movement. n

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Other Books by 2Leaf Press 2Leaf Press challenges the status quo by publishing alternative fiction, non-fiction, poetry and bilingual works by activists, academics, poets and authors dedicated to diversity and social justice with scholarship that is accessible to the general public. 2Leaf Press produces high quality and beautifully produced hardcover, paperback and ebook formats through our series: 2LP Translations, 2LP Classics, Nuyorican World Series, 2LP Explorations in Diversity and 2LP Current Affairs, Culture & Politics. Below is a selection of 2Leaf Press’ published titles.

NONFICTION Designs of Blackness, Mappings in the Literature and Culture of African Americans A. Robert Lee 20TH ANNIVERSARY EXPANDED EDITION

Substance of Fire: Gender and Race in the College Classroom

by Claire Millikin Foreword by R. Joseph Rodríguez, Afterword by Richard Delgado Contributed material by Riley Blanks, Blake Calhoun and Rox Trujillo 2LP EXPLORATIONS IN DIVERSITY

THE BOOK: Understanding Publishing and the New Technology, A Historical Overview with a Publisher’s Perspective

by Gabrielle David No Vacancy; Homeless Women in Paradise

by Michael Reid LITERARY CRITICISM Designs of Blackness, Mappings in the Literature and Culture of African Americans

by A. Robert Lee

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Monsters: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Mathilda

by Mary Shelley, edited by Claire Millikin Raymond 2LP CLASSICS

LITERARY NONFICTION Our Nuyorican Thing, The Birth of a Self-Made Identity

by Samuel Carrion Diaz, with an Introduction by Urayoán Noel Bilingual: English/Spanish NUYORICAN WORLD SERIES

ANTHOLOGIES Black Lives Have Always Mattered A Collection of Essays, Poems, and Personal Narratives Edited by Abiodun Oyewole 2LP EXPLORATIONS IN DIVERSITY

The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives about Being Mixed Race in the 21st Century Edited by Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Sean Frederick Forbes and Tara Betts with a an Afterword by Heidi Durrow 2LP EXPLORATIONS IN DIVERSITY

What Does it Mean to be White in America?

Breaking the White Code of Silence, A Collection of Personal Narratives Edited by Gabrielle David and Sean Frederick Forbes Introduction by Debby Irving and Afterword by Tara Betts 2LP EXPLORATIONS IN DIVERSITY

COLLECTIONS: SHORT STORIES, ESSAYS The Beauty of Being, A Collection of Fables, Short Stories & Essays

by Abiodun Oyewole WHEREABOUTS: Stepping Out of Place, An Outside in Literary & Travel Magazine Anthology Edited by Brandi Dawn Henderson PLAYS Rivers of Women, The Play

by Shirley Bradley LeFlore, with photographs by Michael J. Bracey

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AUTOBIOGRAPHIES/MEMOIRS/BIOGRAPHIES Strength of Soul

by Naomi Raquel Enright Dream of the Water Children: Memory and Mourning in the Black Pacific

by Fredrick D. Kakinami Cloyd Foreword by Velina Hasu Houston, Introduction by Gerald Horne Edited by Karen Chau Trailblazers, Black Women Who Helped Make America Great American Firsts/American Icons

by Gabrielle David Adventures in Black and White

by Philippa Schuyler Edited and with a critical introduction by Tara Betts 2LP CLASSICS

The Fourth Moment: Journeys from the Known to the Unknown, A Memoir

by Carole J. Garrison, Introduction by Sarah Willis POETRY PAPOLíTICO, Poems of a Political Persuasion

by Jesús Papoleto Meléndez, with an Introduction by Joel Kovel and DeeDee Halleck Critics of Mystery Marvel, Collected Poems

by Youssef Alaoui, with an Introduction by Laila Halaby shrimp by jason vasser-elong, with an Introduction by Michael Castro The Revlon Slough, New and Selected Poems

by Ray DiZazzo, with an Introduction by Claire Millikin Written Eye: Visuals/Verse

by A. Robert Lee

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A Country Without Borders: Poems and Stories of Kashmir

by Lalita Pandit Hogan, with an Introduction by Frederick Luis Aldama Branches of the Tree of Life The Collected Poems of Abiodun Oyewole 1969-2013

by Abiodun Oyewole, edited by Gabrielle David with an Introduction by Betty J. Dopson Birds on the Kiswar Tree

by Odi Gonzales, Translated by Lynn Levin Bilingual: English/Spanish 2LP TRANSLATIONS

Incessant Beauty, A Bilingual Anthology

by Ana Rossetti, Edited and Translated by Carmela Ferradáns Bilingual: English/Spanish 2LP TRANSLATIONS

Hey Yo! Yo Soy!, 40 Years of Nuyorican Street Poetry, The Collected Works of Jesús Papoleto Meléndez Bilingual: English/Spanish NUYORICAN WORLD SERIES

2Leaf Press is an imprint owned and operated by the Intercultural Alliance of Artists & Scholars, Inc. (IAAS), a NY-based nonprofit organization that publishes and promotes multicultural literature.

NEW YORK www.2leafpress.org